Seth Rogen Will Direct & Star in ‘The Interview'; James Franco May Co-Star

After a long time in the screenwriter’s chair, Evan Goldberg recently made the first move into directing with his upcoming comedy This is the End, which stars his old friends Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel and Danny McBride playing versions of themselves caught up in last year’s predicted Mayan apocalypse. Goldberg co-directed the film with Rogen, and apparently the two have decided that they like sharing the helm; This is the End isn’t out until this summer, but Goldberg and Rogen are already planning to team up for another comedy.

Goldberg and Rogen have collaborated as writers many times, most recently onThe Green Hornet and The Watch and most famously on their breakout hit Superbad. Their particular flavor of comedy is often characterised by crude or shock humor with deadpan delivery, so there’s a good chance that we’ll see more of the same in their new project, The Interview.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Rogen and Goldberg will co-direct the new comedy, which is based on a story that they co-wrote with The Sarah Silverman Program‘s Dan Sterling, about a talk-show host and his producer who become accidentally embroiled in a plot to assassinate the Prime Minister of North Korea. The film has been bought by Columbia Pictures, who plan to make it for around $30 million. Rogen will star as the the talk-show producer, and the article also intimates that James Franco is in line to play the handsome, charismatic host of the show, though they add that talks with the actor have not yet begun.

Franco, who can currently be seen in theaters playing the lead in Oz the Great and Powerful, seems like a strong candidate for the role. The premise of The Interview sounds superficially similar to Pineapple Express, in which Rogen and Franco played a process server and a drug dealer, respectively, who accidentally become witnesses to a murder by the city’s corrupt cops and are forced to go on the run. The Goldberg-Rogen-Franco triad was reasonably successful with audiences in that instance, as Pineapple Express grossed over $100 million dollars on its $27 million budget.

It should be noted that Franco has a large number of releases and several future projects ahead of him already. He recently completed filming Gary Fleder’s thriller Homefront as well as Paul Haggis’ romance drama The Third Person, and he also co-wrote, co-directed and starred in an adaptation of Stephen Dobyn’s novel Black Dog, Red Dog. He’s also signed on for William Faulkner adaptation As I Lay Dying and true-life thriller True Story. That said, he has some time to clear his schedule; Rogen’s next project is Nicholas Stoller’s comedy Townies, where he will play a family man plagued by the antics of a local frat boy (Zac Efron).

Did the trailer for This is the End make you want to see more of Goldberg, Rogen and Franco, or does their brand of comedy leave you cold? Let us know if you like the sound of The Interview in the comments.

We’ll keep you up to date on The Interviewwhen more details become available.